Desktop printer units for use in a home or office environment are well known and constitute a major proportion of printer units currently manufactured and sold. Such units are arranged to be positioned on a surface of a desk or workstation, in close proximity to a computer system, such as a personal computer, digital camera or the like. In this arrangement, an image can be selected from the computer system and sent to the printer unit for printing, and the printed image can be conveniently collected from the printer unit without requiring the user to leave their desk or office.
Traditionally, the primary focus of manufacturers of desktop printer units of this type has been to provide a simple unit that achieves this convenient mode of operation. As a result, most commercially available desktop printer units are limited in relation to printing speeds with which they operate and the print quality of the image produced. In many cases, such desktop printer units are only capable of producing monochrome images and those units capable of printing in full colour and photo quality, typically do so at a speed less than 5 pages per minute (ppm). As a result, if a print job comprises a number of pages requiring high resolution, full colour printing, it has often been more cost and time effective to send the print job to a remote printer unit dedicated to performing such a task. Therefore, the inability of conventional desktop printer units to operate at high speeds and to produce high quality print images diminishes the overall convenience of such printer units.
Additionally, the current trend of optimising workspaces in both the home and office to create a more eclectic and variable work environment has resulted in a reduction of space available for traditional workplace components, such as computers and the like. In recent times, the size of personal computers, and in particular computer monitors, has reduced dramatically with the advent of slim-line, flat screen monitors, which minimise the desk space occupied by such components. Traditionally, desktop printer units have been of a size largely dictated by the size of the print media required for printing as well as the manner in which printing is performed, which has made it difficult for manufacturers to keep with this trend.
Most desktop printer units are of the inkjet type, and employ a reciprocating carriage containing a printhead which ejects ink as it traverses the print media. Such printer units are limited with regard to the speeds at which they can operate, as in order to print a single line of an image, the printhead may need to traverse the stationary print media a number of times. As such, printer units of this type must house the various mechanisms required to facilitate such reciprocating motion of the printhead, as well as conventional paper handling mechanisms. Therefore, there has typically been a trade-off between the size of the desktop printer unit and the printing speed and print quality of the printer unit, which has resulted in the lack of commercially available desktop printer units capable of printing full process colour images with at least 80% image coverage at speeds around 60 pages per minute (ppm).
The Applicant has developed a printhead that is capable of producing images having a resolution as high as 1600 dpi. Such a printhead is a pagewidth printhead and extends across the media being printed to eject drops onto the surface of the media as it is progressed past. In this regard, the printhead is held in a stationary position as the media is progressed past and does not traverse the media, which makes higher printing speeds possible. Whilst such a printhead makes it possible to provide a printer unit capable of producing high quality print images at high speeds, there is a need to develop a printer unit capable of being situated on a desktop that can accommodate such a printhead and can deliver media past the printhead in a controlled manner to facilitate printing. Further to this, there is also a need to provide a means for servicing the printhead, in the event that the printhead requires maintenance or replacement, which can be readily performed within the framework of the desktop unit.